"No, I didn't," Carella said.
"Well, Laurence Olivier plays an ex-Nazi who does these awful things to Dustin Hoffman's teeth while he's strapped in a dentist's chair. I thought I'd never see a patient again. And more recently… did you see Compromising Positions? Or read the book?"
"No, I'm sorry."
"It's about a philandering dentist who gets murdered. You have no idea how many jokes I've suffered since! Even from my own wife! Rushing off to the office again, darling? The implication being that once a dentist has a woman's mouth open… well…" He shook his head ruefully. "In any event, not many people think of dentists as… friendly types, shall we say? Do you like your dentist?"
"Well…"
"Of course not. We're the bad guys," Ellsworth said, shaking his head again. "When all we're trying to do… well, never mind. I didn't mean to deliver a sermon on The Dentist as Knight in Shining Armor. I was merely trying to explain that Jerry McKennon never felt he was in my office to be tortured. In fact, Jerry told me some of the best jokes I've ever heard. None of them dentist jokes, by the way."
"Are there a lot of dentist jokes?" Carella asked.
"Oh, please," Ellsworth said.
Carella couldn't think of a single dentist joke.
"The point is… until recently, anyway… he was always pleasant and jocular and totally at ease in my office."
"When you say 'until recently'…"
"Yes, well, he…"
Ellsworth shook his head.
"It may have been the nature of the work, I don't know. Some people hear the words 'root canal,' and they visualize the dentist digging clear across Suez or Panama. Actually, it's a commonplace procedure. We remove the dead nerve, clean and seal the canal, and then cap the tooth."
"Is that what these last several appointments were about? Root canal work?"
"Yes. What were those dates you gave me? I know I saw him several times in February…"
"I only have the dates for March," Carella said.
"Sometime early in the month, wasn't it?"
"Yes, one of them was on the eighth."
"It must've been around then, yes. During the February visits, I removed the nerve, reamed the canal, obtunded it, and so on. In March…"
"Obtunded?"
"Sealed it. It must have been on that March eighth visit that I fitted him with a temporary cap. And a week or so later…"
"Yes, the fifteenth…"
"Is that what you have? Then that's when it was. What I did then was take an impression of the tooth… a mold, you know, for the permanent cap… and then cemented the temporary cap back on. I expected to have the permanent cap a few weeks later…"
"That would have been the twenty-ninth…"
"Yes, I would guess so."
"The appointment he never kept."
"Yes."
Ellsworth shook his head again.
"I'll tell you… I should have suspected something like this coming."
"How do you mean?"
"People never think of dentists as medical men, you know, but we do study the same biological sciences a physician does. Human anatomy, biochemistry, bacteriology, histology, pharmacology, pathology… our training includes all that. And when an essentially cheerful man suddenly comes in looking so… hangdog… well, I should have suspected a psychological problem."
"He seemed depressed to you, did he?"
"Enormously so."
"Despondent?"
"That's another definition of depressed, isn't it?"
"Did he mention why?"
"No."
"Never hinted…"
"No."
"… not even obliquely…"
"No."
"… at what might have been troubling him?"
"No."
"I gather you weren't surprised then," Carella said.
"By what?"
"His death. By poisoning."
"Do you mean did I think he was suicidal?"
"Did you?"
"No, I never once suspected he would take his own life. Never. In that respect, I was enormously surprised. When I heard about it… God, what a shock! A patient poisoning himself? And… I'll tell you the truth, Detective Carella… I felt guilty."
"Guilty?"
"Yes. For not having been more alert, for not suspecting that his depression was quite so serious, for not anticipating… yes, his suicide." He shook his head. "We take things so much for granted, you know. We miss the important signs."
"Yes," Carella said, and nodded and looked at his notebook again.
"Did he ever mention any of these names to you?" he asked. "Marilyn Hollis?"
"No."
"Nelson Riley?"
"No, I'm sorry."
"Charles Endicott. Or Chip? Either one?"
"No."
"Basil Hollander?"
"No."
Carella closed his notebook.
"Dr. Ellsworth," he said, "thank you very much for your time, I'm sorry to have bothered you on your day off." He rose, fished out his wallet, and handed Ellsworth a card. "Here's where you can reach me," he said. "If you happen to remember anything Mr. McKennon said to you, anything that might have some bearing on his death, I'd appreciate your giving me a call."
"I will indeed," Ellsworth said.
"Again, thank you," Carella said. "If I ever need a good dentist…"
"Don't go to Laurence Olivier," Ellsworth said, and smiled.
The paperwork from the Twelfth Precinct arrived in the messenger pouch at a little after one o'clock. It told Willis essentially what Larkin had told him on the phone, but it also pinpointed the exact time Hollander had got home on Easter Sunday. A neighbor had seen him going up in the building's elevator at approximately seven-thirty p.m. Hollander had got off on the fourth floor. The M.E.—faced with uncertainties like the changing temperature in the apartment and the fact that the body had been lying on a heat-absorbing carpet—had vaguely estimated the time of his death as sometime late Sunday night or early Monday morning. At any rate, he'd still been alive at seven-thirty, presumably heading for apartment 401 down the hall. Willis wondered what Marilyn Hollis had been doing after seven-thirty last Sunday night.
He had not seen Carella since they'd both checked in this morning. Carella did not yet know they'd inherited a corpse from the Twelfth Squad. Neither did Lieutenant Byrnes. Willis went into his office and told him now.
"Are you crazy?" Byrnes said.
His corner windows were wide open to April's balmy breezes. He was sitting in his shirtsleeves behind a pile of paperwork on his desk—close-cropped iron-grey hair, flinty blue eyes opened wide in astonishment. Willis had the feeling he was going to leap over the pile of papers and lunge for his throat.
"Why the hell did you…?"
"They've got to be related," Willis said calmly.
"I'm related to a third cousin in Pennsylvania…"
"This isn't a third cousin, Pete," Willis said. "This is the second victim with close ties to a woman named Marilyn Hollis."
"Are you saying she killed them?"
"Come on, Pete, how can I say that?"
"Then what are you saying? We've got a caseload here'll take us till next Easter to…"
"So what do you want me to do?" Willis said, somewhat testily considering he was talking to the boss. "Give Larkin our case?"
"Who the hell is Larkin?" Byrnes asked.